Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems during her lifetime. She lived a solitary life in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, where a cache of her poems were discovered by her sister after her death. She is now considered one of America’s most significant poets.

CXVI

I MEASURE every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if they bore it long,
Or did it just begin?
I could not tell the date of mine,
It feels so old a pain.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

I wonder if when years have piled—
Some thousands—on the cause
Of early hurt, if such a lapse
Could give them any pause;

Or would they go on aching still
Through centuries above,
Enlightened to a larger pain
By contrast with the love.

The grieved are many, I am told;
The reason deeper lies,—
Death is but one and comes but once,
And only nails the eyes.

There ’s grief of want, and grief of cold,—
A sort they call “despair”;
There ’s banishment from native eyes,
In sight of native air.

And though I may not guess the kind
Correctly, yet to me
A piercing comfort it affords
In passing Calvary,

To note the fashions of the cross,
Of those that stand alone,
Still fascinated to presume
That some are like my own

One Response to “Poetry Saturdays: Emily Dickinson”

I love Emily Dickinson. At the risk of being totally disrespectful, however, I must share what my wag of a college roomie once shared with me which has raised my spirits on gloomy days. And it is this. All of Emily’s poetry can be sung to the tune and beat of the “Yellow Rose of Texas.” I sang this one for Becky’s mother. It was excellent.